Warhammer - A Love/Hate Relationship
Hello my friends. Welcome back to my blog.
Today I wanted to talk a bit about one of my favourite fandoms, and also one of my biggest annoyances, which is Warhammer and its fandom.
Chaos is probably my favourite concept in Warhammer, and one of the things that I think most distinguishes it from other fantasy and science-fiction settings. The biggest inspirations for Chaos are the works of Michael Moorcock and H.P. Lovecraft, as well as elements of Paradise Lost and Forbidden Planet. Chaos exists because of the Warp, an alternate dimension called the Immaterium, that exists outside of our physical world, where time and distance are meaningless. It is where psychic abilities and magic originate, reflecting the souls of every living being in the universe in a realm where thought can be given form, and Daemons can sprout in sentience from nightmares and bloodshed. It is a realm ruled by the Gods of Chaos, immeasurably powerful beings who play a Great Game, with the souls of mortal beings as the prizes. The four Gods are the vicious Khorne, lord of rage and murder, the jolly Nurgle, lord of disease and decay, the scheming Tzeentch, lord of change and sorcery, and the alluring Slaanesh, lord of pleasure and excess. They all have their own minions, and mortal followers, as well as rivalries and alliances. The existence of the Warp and Chaos makes the metaphysical real and tangible, as gods and souls now exist as quantifiable facets of the universe, putting characters and armies at greater risk than that posed by normal warfare. In Fantasy Chaos entered the Warhammer World by coming through the ancient Portal gates at the poles, creating the Winds of Magic and inspiring mortal followers in what would become the Chaos Wastes, and threatening all of the Mortal Races from then on. In fact it was the forces of Chaos that would eventually destroy the Warhammer World in the End Times, leading to the creation of the Mortal Realms. In 40K however Chaos had a much more significant, and much more insidious influence, being woven into the backstory of the setting in a way that enhanced many of the factions at play, and helped to create and solidify the "Grimdark" aesthetics that Warhammer would become not just known for, but emblematic of.
Now I've covered a lot of Warhammer 40K's lore in a previous podcast episode, where I also discussed some of my issues with Games Workshop and its practices as a company, so while I won't reiterate every single point I do want to cover some of the main elements for context here again. First its important to bear in mind that 40K, while having plenty of purely fantastical elements, is a science-fiction setting that ostensibly takes place in our far future, specifically the 41st Millennium, with the current calendar putting us in the 3rd Millennium to give you an idea of just how far in the future that is. However the "history" of the setting doesn't begin until the 15th Millennium, over 12000 years in our future. For context the Pyramids of Giza, constructed in Ancient Egypt, are less than 5000 years old, so obviously this is a substantial time jump. From the 15th to the 25th Millennia Mankind spread through the stars, in a period known as the Age of Technology, using a subspecies of Mankind known as Navigators to help guide their ships through the roiling miasma of the Warp, allowing for faster-than-light travel, albeit in a dangerous way akin to old sailors taking their ships across an ocean storm. The galaxy was a harsh place, infested by dangerous xenos races, with the Aeldari and their empire being one of the largest organised forces arrayed against the nascent human colonies, as well as the Orks, fractured clans of fungoid brutes that form large gatherings known as Waaaghs that rampage through space seeking strong enemies to fight. However Mankind was far from defenceless, building incredible weapons and warships through forgeworlds like Mars, to arm its forces as they spread across the galaxy, including the robotic Men of Iron, soldiers with Artificial Intelligence powering them. However the Men of Iron rebelled against Mankind, and after a cataclysmic conflict known as the Cybernetic Revolt much of this Golden Age was lost, and advanced technology looked upon with superstition and distrust, and "Abominable Intelligence" is outlawed, with all advanced machines requiring a human component to remain trustworthy, with the secrets of technology only known by the Priesthood of Mars. This period became remembered as the Dark Age of Technology. In the wake of the destruction began the Age of Strife, where human psykers began to appear with increasing regularity, their untrained minds allowing Chaos to gain a foothold in Realspace, leading to the collapse of the human civilisation as Warp storms divided real space, dividing the Worlds of Mankind in a time that would be known as "Old Night".
While Mankind struggled however the Aeldari were at their apex. They did not travel through the Warp in the same way as Mankind, insteading using the artificially constructed Webway to traverse the Warp, completely protected from the Daemons that roam the Immaterium, and on the Aeldari Homeworlds the powerful race began to fall to depravity. As the boredom and ennui of their immortal lives began to set in, pleasure cults began to be forged seeking hedonistic excess. The best psychic seers of the Aeldari saw that this would lead to the downfall of their empire, because when mortal beings die their souls go to rest within the Warp. The Aldari, being psychically powerful, have very powerful souls in the Warp, and the corruption of the pleasure cults was leading to many powerful souls ending up in the Warp, where they began to coalesce into a new entity. Many Aeldari fled their homeworlds, building enormous continent sized ships called Craftworlds to ply the depths of space, and they created soul stones, to preserve their souls on death, and keep them from falling into the Warp. But the entity in the Warp continued to grow, coinciding with the creation of the Warp storms and psykers that caused Mankind's Age of Strife. At the dawn of the 31st Millennium however the Warp storms cleared, as the fourth Chaos God Slaanesh was born, created by the Aeldari, and consuming their homeworlds in rift between the Immaterium and Realspace, a wound in physical reality that would come to be known as the Eye of Terror. Billions of Aeldari had their souls physically ripped away and consumed by the nascent God, and those that survived fled into the Webway, their souls wounded, to found the Dark City of Commoragh deep in its tunnels, becoming known as the Drukhari, dark pirates who use slavery and torture to satiate the thirsting god and save their souls.
The Fall of the Aeldari led to the clearing of the Warp storms that clouded the former interstellar empires of Man, and this was when the Emperor, a powerful psyker who had dominated Terra during Old Night, launched his Great Crusade, leading his armies into space to reconquer the galaxy as an Imperium of Mankind under his control. Aware of the Chaos Gods and the Warp, the danger that was posed by the daemons, and how superstition and thought becomes real in the Immaterium, the Emperor sought to promote the Imperial Truth, and stamp out religion and cults across the galaxy, something that had become common on the scattered worlds of humanity, and while doing this his armies eliminated thousands of races in xenocidal campaigns, taking the stars for themselves. The Chaos Gods however worked against the Emperor, and began to seduce mortals to do their bidding, most notably the Space Marine Primarch Horus, Warmaster of the Emperor's armies and the closest thing the Emperor has to a favoured son. In the early 32nd Millenium Horus led half of the Imperium's armies in open revolt against the Emperor, in the Horus Heresy, which would become the most damaging war since the Cybernetic Revolt. Many remaining and rare pieces of Dark Age Technology were lost forever, either corrupted by Chaos or destroyed, never to be recovered. Worlds were ruined by powerful and destructive weapons that caused extinction level events. Billions were slaughtered as daemons rampaged in Realspace, even running roughshod over Terra as the Imperial Palace was laid siege by the Chaos Legions. At the climax the Emperor himself was laid low, mortally wounded while defeating the ArchTraitor Horus, with only the mysterious Golden Throne that he was interred upon able to preserve the Emperor's life. In the aftermath of the Heresy the Imperial Truth was forgotten, and the Imperial Faith arising in its place, worshipping the God-Emperor as the last beacon of Mankind's light in a dark and unforgiving universe. An Inquisition was formed, its mission to root out traitors and heretics throughout the Imperium and neutralise them, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia. The remaining traitors meanwhile fled into the Eye of Terror, led by Abaddon the Despoiler, where they would continue to plague the Imperium for the next 10,000 years as it continued its gradual decline.
This is where the modern setting of 40K found itself for the longest time, on the verge of the 13th Black Crusade of the Chaos forces from the Eye of Terror to assault the fortress world of Cadia, the last bulwark against the horros of Chaos. And this in itself was merely the latest step in a series of severe problems that the Imperium has faced, including the invasions of the extragalactic Tyranid Hive Fleets, the awakening of the ancient Necron race, a loss of communications with the most distant worlds of the Imperium, and the failing of several systems on the Golden Throne that cannot be repaired. Now as I said Warhammer is the setting for a tabletop wargame, where hobbyists take armies of models they have built and painted and use dice and tape measures to wage war with opponents, and because of this having a static setting for decades makes perfect sense, and even the Black Library novels or tie-in video games set within the 40K universe can take place anywhere in the 41st Millenium, and obviously a thousand years of time across a galaxy of planets means that plenty of stories can be told without overlapping and treading all over each other. And this is how I was introduced to Warhammer.
The town I grew up in had a Games Workshop store for as long as I can remember, and I'm sure I had glanced through the window looking at the nicely painted models on the display boards. I also remember seeing the White Dwarf magazine that the company published, full of photography and articles showing off their models and games, in local newsagents. I think my introduction came though when I purchased an issue of White Dwarf that tied into the release of the new skirmish game Mordheim, a game set in a ruined city in the Warhammer World, where gangs battle and search for treasure, but the reason I purchased it was the free model it came with - an elf bounty hunter that made me think of Link from the Legend of Zelda. However this was also a year after the release of 40K's Third Edition, and so the promotion and hype for that caught my attention when I tried to learn more. I was already familiar with model kits, have built and painted some models of several Star Trek ships over the previous years, and so learning more about the models available, several of which were getting new versions as part of the edition release cycle, really caught my attention. One friend at school, after seeing me reading White Dwarf and expressing interest in Warhammer, even gave me some of his old models and issues of the magazine, and as a result I started to paint some Space Marines, and read battle reports and slowly learn the lore. This led to me asking for the Third Edition starter set for my birthday, and getting invested in the Space Marines, who I really enjoyed the models for. Space Marines are in many ways the poster faction for Warhammer 40,000, being genetically engineered superhumans in brightly coloured power armour. In a lot of ways they are similar to a brotherhood of monastic warrior knights, equipped with the Imperium's best weapons, including the iconic chainsword, and the revered Boltgun, an automatic weapon that fires large calibre rounds that explode after hitting a target. Obviously there is more to that, and in line with the more satirical extremes of the setting they are in actuality violent and maladjusted child soldiers artificially turned into living weapons, rather than the noble paladin archetype that most of the lore and fiction attempts to portray them as, but as most of the stories that exist are written from an in-universe perspective, usually by Imperial narrators, it is a form of propaganda almost to glorify the Space Marines as the God-Emperor's Angels of Death. For me though I just saw visually interesting, easy to paint, multipart model kits that allowed for a lot of customisation, with plenty of supplement books for different Chapters of Space Marines, each of which is essentially a different army within the larger faction, with its own backstory, traditions and paintschemes. In fact shortly after I was drawn in to Warhammer Games Workshop launched a global campaign called the Third War for Armageddon. Between a codex supplement I could easily afford at £5 packed with lore detailing the invasions of the Hive World of Armageddon at the hands of the Orks, and the opening stages of the Third War for the system as the Ork Warboss Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka (a name inspired by Iron lady Thatcher herself) launched the largest Ork Waaagh seen for millennia to overwhelm the Imperial defenders, and two issues of White Dwarf containing an almighty battle report spread across 4 boards with over a dozen players as Imperial forces began their counterattack, as well as the usual rules, painting, discussions and modelling articles, I was pretty much instantly hooked. This was the first of several worldwide campaigns I followed, both for 40K and Fantasy, but this was the only one I actively played for. The next 40K related one actually focused on the 13th Black Crusade, with Chaos forces invading the Imperial world of Cadia to get a foothold out of the Eye of Terror. It ended in a stalemate due to the worldwide results, and so the setting remained as it had, but it was a nice attempt at trying to advance the storyline in a small way.
Over the following decade or so I continued to gather Space Marine models and White Dwarf issues, following the game across its next few iterations as I grew to adulthood, even laying down funds to buy not just several starter sets to add to my force, as Space Marines were always an included faction in these sets, but also the impressive and limited edition Space Hulk boxed game, containing some of the most impressive Space Marine models I have still seen to this day, as well as beautifully detailed board tiles to represent the ship the game took place on. I also played several games in this timeframe, but never found the gameplay of Warhammer as rewarding as the hobby side of the fandom, the painting and modelling. I read a few of the books, following along with the opening novels of the Horus Heresy novel series via my local Library. I even managed to get several video games, taking my first foray into strategy games with the Dawn of War series, before playing the incredible console release of Space Marine, featuring Ultramarine Captain Titus fighting Orks and Chaos Marines on the forgeworld of Graia. It remains one of my favourite videogames, and one of the best experiences I have had in this setting, with a sequel due later this year that I know will be my Game of the Year. However while many of my models were built, I struggled to find time and motivation to paint them. Part of this was an indecision on how to paint my marines - did I want to paint them as the noble Salamanders, one of the chapters that defended Armageddon? As the regimented Ultramarines, the default colour scheme used in promotional material? The haunted Blood Angels, warriors consumed by a dark and hidden curse they must fight against? The mysterious Blood Ravens, protagonists of the Dawn of War series? Or the savage Space Wolves, viking style warriors with animalistic tendencies? There was so much choice and I enjoyed them all, and far more besides, however it wasn't possible in the rules of the game to have a mixed force of the different armies. There was also the very daunting prospect of painting an entire army of models, many of which were footsoldiers, with the same repetitive colour scheme. As a result of the hobby guilt I was getting from the lack of time playing, as well as my mounting Pile of Shame (as a collection of unbuilt/unpainted models is known in the community, but which in my case also included White Dawarf magazines I had done nothing more than skim through) I eventually stepped away from actively engaging with Warhammer. I may still have followed what was occurring online, but I eventually sold all of my miniatures, except for a few pieces where I was proud of their finished paint job, one of which I had even entered into their national Golden Demon painting competition, and left it behind me.
However walking away from Warhammer didn't mean that I stopped being aware of it. I still enjoyed looking at the pictures of the new models online, and learning about the new books that were coming for the then Seventh Edition of the game, which was in many ways a gamechanger for the setting. The biggest reason was that after having a static timeline for years, Seventh Edition, coming out around the same time as the End Times, began to adopt a similar approach to that, and moved the timeline forward. Obviously the End Times had gotten my attention, as the steps it took had people talking about Warhammer Fantasy in a way that I had never seen, with its initial stages acting almost as a "do-over" of a previous worldwide campaign that had followed the Third War of Armageddon, in this case the Storm of Chaos campaign for Fantasy that was supposed to show Chaos making a huge push, led by Archaon the Everchosen as their champion, and Valten as a hero of the Empire fighting against them. The original campaign had ended in a stalemate when the worldwide results had not shown a Chaos win however, as it had seemed obvious that Games Workshop had been trying to give Chaos a bit of a boost, in order to compete with the myriad of other popular factions. There were about the same amount of factions in both Fantasy and 40K, however while around half the factions of 40K are unified by all being elements of the Imperium, Fantasy's were far more disparate, and while there were several factions unified under the banner of Chaos, there were other threats such as the Dark Elves, Orcs and Goblins, Vampire Counts, Skaven, and Tomb Kings who could all threaten the Forces of Order. However with how popular Chaos was in 40K as the main "nemesis" faction it made sense to try and position them in a similar way in Fantasy. Now obviously Storm of Chaos wasn't a success, and was very heavily focused on Chaos, while The End Times ran over 5 large campaign and lore books released over the course of a year, each focusing on a new front of the war, focused around a returning or new villain for the setting, and introducing dramatic changes. The End Times, and the resulting reboot to Age of Sigmar, would go on to be notorious among the fandom, with many seeing it as an insult to their loyalty and support of Warhammer Fantasy, but it started to rave reviews, as the first book focused on the return of Nagash, who had ascended to godhood, gotten a glorious new centrepiece model, and gave any army the ability to raise the dead, it was obviously a huge success, and so naturally it was only a matter of time until 40K followed a similar path.
It started with campaign books released throughout the editions. Unlike the previous worldwide campaigns these were instead themed collections of rules, allowing you to fight themed and narrative battles around key battlegrounds in the setting. The first major one I remember was the two-part campaign book War Zone: Fenris, where the Chaos Legion the Thousand Sons assaulted the Space Wolves' homeworld. The most notable thing about this however, was it saw the release of the first Primarch model for Warhammer 40,000. The Primarchs are the being from whom the Space Marines get their advanced genetics. They are essentially all the children of the Emperor, and are thus all basically demi-Gods. Most of them were absent in some way from the modern setting of the game. The Primarchs that turned traitor during the Horus Heresy had mostly ascended to Daemonhood, and had withdrawn into the Eye of Terror, where Abaddon had taken over their forces, and so they were not believed to be a major concern. The loyalist Primarchs however had all been removed in the history of the setting, being all disappeared, lost or killed over the millennia since the Heresy. I should add that the Horus Heresy is also a game setting available from Games Workshop, initially started for more advanced players and modellers using predominantly high-quality resin models, and the Primarchs had appeared in that, but the game size of Heresy was noticeably larger than the game size of 40K - Armies were given points values based on the units within them, and Heresy games averaged 1000 points more than 40K at tournaments and events. As a result it was generally thought that the Primarchs would be too unbalanced for 40K, yet now here was the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red in all of his glory, as an incredible and fully plastic centrepiece model. It was a literally a gamechanger, and had the fandom shook, wondering what else could change. And we soon learned, as the Gathering Storm series of campaign books was announced. In a similar way to The End Times, this was a remaster of a key event, in this case the 13th Black Crusade, and the first book in this series suggested that huge changes were afoot, as the first book in the series was called The Fall of Cadia.
Now as I suggested earlier The End Times, while it got people talking and gaming, had a very negative backlash during it later releases, and throughout the launch of Age of Sigmar it was hated by a lot of long-term fans, despite it bringing in a large new audience. The reason for this was due in large part to what happened to the game. The final book of the End Times, Archaon, saw the Chaos forces destroy the Warhammer World despite the fact that several of the mortal heroes had quite literally become Gods, including the returned Sigmar, Nagash, and several elven heroes including Tyrion and Teclis. The heroes all ended up defeated, the world was destroyed, and mortal souls were consumed en masse by the Chaos gods, included the Skaven Great Horned Rat that joined the Chaos pantheon. Age of Sigmar revealed however that Sigmar and the other new gods had restored life to the Mortal Realms however, only for Chaos to attack again forcing Sigmar to unleash his new soldiers the Stormcast Eternals, warriors he could reforge upon death to continually fight against the darkness. By this point though as interesting as Age of Sigmar appeared to be the damage was done for many fans. The Stormcast were derisively referred to by many as "Sigmarines" due to their perceived, and in many cases deliberate, similarities to Space Marines. From a purely marketing perspective everything that the fans derided about them made sense - They were designed to be a core faction that could be easy to paint and play, and could be included in every starter set, something Fantasy had not always had, but there were other criticisms of the transition to Age of Sigmar as a whole. Some Fantasy armies such as Wood Elves and Bretonnia had not received updates in years, while others like the Tomb Kings had only recently been updated, but now all of them were sidelined - no longer being actively supported while releases focused on the new armies. This had happened in the 90s to the Squats of 40K, leading to the term squatting for removing an army from the game, and the fans of the squatted armies were understandably pissed off. As a result there was a very real fear that this would happen to 40K. That an advance of the timeline could lead to dramatic and sweeping changes that saw armies removed from the game. However it had been a couple of years since the Age of Sigmar launch, and many others, including myself, suspected that Games Workshop had learned its lesson from the previous disaster, despite taking the risk to advance the timeline. Only time would tell how it would pay off.
Personally, I generally enjoy the changes brought about the Gathering Storm. Firstly, Abaddon's previous battles with the Imperium were recontextualised as part of a long game that culminated here with the destruction of Cadia, as he used weapons he had gained to destroy the planet. Next the Aeldari Craftworld of Biel-Tan was fractured, divided as part of an Aeldari gambit to save their race from Chaos, and leading to a new Aeldari faction called the Ynnari. And finally the return of Primarch Robute Guilliman of the Ultramarines, trapped in armour designed to save his life, to take over command of the Imperium as the Emperor's Regent. This then led to the Eighth Edition of 40K, where the Eye of Terror had now spilled out and split the galaxy in half, creating the Circatrix Maledictum, or Great Rift, a large Warp storm that had caused irreparable damage to the Imperium and affected every faction in the setting. Most of this was pretty well-received by many in fact. However there was another change that did annoy people, which was the debut of the Primaris Space Marines. These suddenly appeared in the lore due to the actions taken by Martian Tech Priest Belisarius Cawl, a new character given orders after the Heresy by Guilliman to create new Marines, and who had also created Guilliman's armour. Now this was a lore change - the original Space Marines were created directly by the Emperor, and technology in 40K is not developed or innovated upon by the Cult Mechanicus of Mars, simply being maintained and treated with reverance and suspicion in equal measure, so Cawl's actions were unheard of, and almost heretical. Many long-lasting fans and hobbyists reacted negatively to this change and the introduction of the Primaris. As I said Space Marines were the flagship faction for 40K, and definitely the faction that gets favourable treatment from Games Workshop - the most releases, a codex rule book for every edition, several sub-factions with their own models and rules, being in every starter set, havimng the most novels, and so on. However the model line has some issues that I think the Primaris were an attempt to correct.
The first, was a desire to simplify the range. The standard Space Marine unit was a tactical squad - a ten man squad featuring a sergeant with a combat weapon and pistol, a special weapon, a heavy weapon, and 7 men with boltguns. The standard Primaris unit is an intercessor squad - a unit of five or ten men all equipped with boltguns. There are still options for the sergeant, should you wish to use them, however the main loadout is simplified, and therefore easier for new players. There is less of a mental load with many of the new Primaris units in fact, with each seeming to be locked to a single weapon loadout with the exception of a single model, usually the sergeant, while variable loadouts were far more common on older Space Marine squads.
Secondly there is an issue of scale. The Space Marine models have all been kept at a very consistent scale since the plastic and metal models that came out with a range redesign in Second Edition in the early 90s. However in the lore of the setting an armoured Space Marine is supposed to tower over a baseline human, yet Imperial Guard and Aeldari models were the same size as Space Marines on the tabletop. As a result there had been a growing movement to adapt the models to "truescale" undertaken by hobbyists online, usually through extensive conversion of the miniature. However now that 3D printing was starting to become more accessible and affordable this was becoming more common, and I believe that the larger Primaris kits were an attempt to rescale the range in order to have the tabletop models resemble the lore more closely, preventing players turning to these new technologies.
Finally I believe that one issue is one of Intellectual Property rights. During the transistion from Fantasy to Age of Sigmar several races and other words had been renamed, and this seems to have been done to replace some of the more generic fantasy names with unique names that can be trademarked. Orcs had become Orruks, Elves had become Aelves, Dwarfs had become Duardin, Ogres had become Ogors, Trolls to Troggoths, Dragons to Draconith, Giants to Gargants, Lizardmen to Seraphon, etc. Games Workshop had made previous attempts to trademark the term Space Marine, in part to prevent the sale of third party resincast or 3D printed bitz for conversions, yet they had been unsuccessful due to the commonality of the term. As a result it was believed that the new Primaris name was designed to be one that could be trademarked, preventing third party use in the future, something which seems to be the case.
However as time went on it soon became apparent that this was the way forward that Games Workshop would be taking. New models were released. The new game editions were successful. Some old factions even returned, even the Squats who now returned as the Leagues of Votann. Many older Marine kits were replaced by Primaris analogues, or retired altogether, and the following editions continued to add more Primarchs, and even upgrade previous Marine characters to the Primaris scale, while also continuing to progress the storylines at play across the setting, and we soon got novels exploring the new status quo, or launching new storylines after the opening of the Grreat Rift. In fact Games Workshop even launched its own subscription service called Warhammer+ with original animated content that all took place after the opening of the Great Rift, with one of the best entries, a series called Pariah Nexus, focusing on a plot of the ancient Necron race in an important area of space, following directly on from Ninth Edition CGI launch trailer. In fact the Pariah Nexus would go on to be a flashpoint for campaign updates across the Ninth and Tenth Editions of 40K.
Now I am a huge fan of the current direction of Warhammer, and I love the Primaris model line as much as I love the classic Space Marine line, and in more recent times the second edition of the Horus Heresy game led to a new scale for classic Marines, now known on the lore as Firstborn, which again meant more great models. As a result I decided to get back into the hobby with the 9th Edition launch box, having gotten back into painting due to a Power Rangers board game I had bought the previous year. During the Covid lockdowns here in the UK I was able to paint a sizeable force of Marines, a combination of the contents of the Ninth Edition's Indomitus launch box, as well as other Marines I had bought by selling the Necron half of the launch box. Knowing that this would be an army I would be gathering mainly to paint rather than to play the game I decided to settle quite early on a painting scheme, and created my own chapter of Space Marines. Knowing that I could easily be bored when repeating the same colour scheme dozens of times across the army I decided to create an army that wore different colours of armour to symbolise their role on the battlefield, something supported by the lore but not something I had seen done before. I christened them the Knights Chromatica, came up with some basic lore for them based on the models I had, and designed a Chapter symbol for them. Gradually I was inspired more by one of the very first chapters of Space Marines described in Rogue Trader, the chapter the Rainbow Warriors, named for a Greenpeace ship that had been sunk a few years prior to release as part of the satirical nature of the early lore, and a chapter with very few mentions since, and so I wove their history in with that I had already created, making my own Knights Chromatica a successor of sorts to the Rainbow Warriors. I have since added several more models to the pile, mainly through a partworks magazine from Hachette, as well as buying some kits on Ebay that have been retired by Games Workshop and are no longer available, allowing me to amass quite a collection. I am currently in the process of revising my lore and colour scheme so that I can catch up on the models I haven't painted yet, as well as use the painting to help improve my mental health, something it worked wonders for during the Covid lockdowns.
Getting back into Warhammer also meant I got to engage more with the community. I wasn't the only one who got back into Warhammer during Covid and Games Workshop saw a surge in popularity that led to record profits that drew them a large amount of mainstream attention, helped by vocal fans such as former Superman actor Henry Cavill who has been very outspoken about his love of the franchise, and is currently trying to work with Games Workshop and Amazon to get a streaming franchise up and running. There were also many new youtubers who I became aware of around this time, such as Arbitor Ian, Midwinter Minis and former Games Workshop design team member Rogue Hobbies, as well as many others that had been running for years that I renewed my fandom for such as Snipe and Wib, Chapter Master Valrak and Leutin09. Some did videos looking at the lore, some did painting tutorials and discussions, some looked at old models and rulebooks, and some looked at upcoming releases and rumours, but each offered their own distinct view on Warhammer and the hobby that made for a very interesting mix of content. There was also two web-series that I got very into, as did many other fans on Reddit and elsewhere. The first was the phenemonal fanmade CGI creation Astartes, made by Syama Pederson, which featured a small squad of Space Marines brutally assaulting a cultist ship and exterminating the human soldiers they found there before finding a larger threat. Its a dialogue free series, and is fascinating to watch, and a very competent piece of work to only be made by a single person. In fact Games Workshop even made an offer to employ Pederson to create content for their Warhammer+ streaming service, and Astartes itself is now hosted on their community page rather than on Youtube.
However the second web series that I became a fan of was more negatively impacted by the changes Games Workshop made leading up to the launch of the Warhammer+ service. This was a much more irreverent series called If The Emperor Had A Text-To-Speech Device, and the title was very self-descriptive. It was made by BruvaAlfabusa and his collaborators, and seems to have started as somewhat of a joke, as the God-Emperor is given a text-to-speech device, allowing him to interact with his loyal Custodian Guard, Kitten, who filled him in on the past ten millennia of developments in the setting, causing much ire in the cranky Emperor at the current state of things, leading to some radical changes. As TTS, as it became known, continued it began to advance the storyline of 40K in its own way, beginning as it did in the more static setting of Sixth Edition. Many of the changes were similar in some ways to the ones actually made by Games Workshop later on in fact - seeing the return of Primarchs, a change in the organisation of the Imperium, building up for a big final battle with Chaos, however it was all done in a way that played a lot more of some of the memes and in-jokes of the franchise, as well as the wider internet, and it ran for several years getting much bigger in scope. However the launch of Warhammer+ also saw Games Workshop release some new IP restrictions for fan made content that were much more restrictive than what had previously been allowed, and so BruvaAlfabusa made the decision to end TTS, meaning it actually ended with a cliffhanger ending as the final 3-part episode of the series was left with its final part unfinished. It was disheartening for many, but the team behind TTS stuck together for a new series with very similar main characters set in the World of Darkness RPG setting. For many however the new IP restrictions and the effect that they had on many fan productions was a source of much ire for Games Workshop, especially when seen in concert with some business practices that were becoming much more prevalent.
I've alluded to some of these changes in previous paragraphs, so let me elaborate upon them. Firstly there were limited edition launch boxes. See, the Indomitus box that launched Ninth Edition of 40K, unlike previous starter boxes for the previous editions and the other games, was a limited run thing, with exclusive models that would not be in the starter sets. Indomitus obviously sold out, with many of the limited boxes being quickly bought by scalpers who then tried to sell them on at a hugely inflated price. GW responded by making the box Made to Order for a limited time, allowing everyone who wanted it to get it. However this would not be their only such box. As Ninth Edition went on launch boxes containing special rulebooks and new models for armies weeks or months ahead of their main release became increasingly common, but they would not go Made to Order again, and this practice spread into the other games produced by Games Workshop, such as Age of Sigmar, Horus Heresy, Necromunda, Warcry and Kill Team. It even extended to limited special editions of novels, such as the Siege of Terra series. All that happened though was that all these special releases got largely claimed by scalpers, despite any attempt by GW to incorporate online queuing systems to prevent bots. Not just that but the use of quite predatory "fear of missing out" tactics were used by the Warhammer Community page to hype these releases. As a quick tangent Warhammer Community is a bit of a misnomer for the company's website. The community around the Warhammer hobby has its downsides (some I will elaborate more on later) but generally is one of my favourites online, as there is a lot of passion for all aspects of the hobby from most people and it is often very encouraging of new people, however the Warhammer Community page has no way for the community to engage or discuss anything posted there - you cannot comment, or react, and the articles posted on that site are just hype pieces or discussions for new and upcoming releases. Even the Warhammer Youtube channel doesn't allow comments underneath any videos posted there. And part of this may be due to some of their other more controversial choices, some of which inspired my previous podcast on this subject.
Firstly there has been a disappointing trend by Games Workshop recently to not credit the people developing the game. In the past we would be told who had sculpted the new models when they were announced. We could find out what painters worked on the in-house 'Eavy Metal painting team. Codexes and rulebooks had credits for playtesters, artists and writers. Even the painting classes on the Youtube channel had known presenters, who were able to gain followings and became known for their work. All of this led to people like John Blanche, Jes Goodwin, Brian Nelson, Aly Morrison, Mike McVey, Gav Thorpe, Darren Latham, Duncan Rhodes, Louise Sugden (Rogue Hobbies) and many others to become notable among the community. However recently many things are simply credited to the "Games Workshop Team". Now obviously many of the people involved have their own social media where they can post their own work once officially revealed to say "I did this", but I still think its pretty terrible. In fact even when designers and painters are interviewed on the community page we rarely get more than a first name. Now there may indeed be some good reasons for this. I know after several Codex rulebooks he wrote were poorly received by the player base Matt Ward received a lot of ire from the fandom for years during Fifth Edition, and as the internet has made some of the worst aspects of any fandom far worse by emboldening the worst type of people to say truly reprehensible things due to anonymity and no fear of repercussion I can imagine not having the full credit of the team members responsible would be a good safeguarding tactic.
This is especially the case as there have been many poorly received rules updates, as Games Workshop, in an effort to keep its games balanced, frantically scrambles whenever something "breaks" the game by not acting as intended. Part of this may be due to the lead time for new rules to be written, meaning that in the time between a set of rules being playtested and being published the main meta of the game can have shifted drastically. This was most recently seen with the release of the Leagues of Votann, the returned Squats for Ninth Edition. Their Codex on launch was easily the most powerful ruleset in the game, with their units having high damage output and survivability and relatively low points cost, quickly dominating the meta. This was partially because, during its playtesting phase, it had been tested against the then-recent Tau Empire and Aeldari Codexes, both also very powerful upon launch, but had received significant nerfs in updates since. As a result Games Workshop had to scramble to acknowledge this imbalance in the game very quickly, with the updates announced between the release of the Votann launch box and their official release, something that remains an unequaled feat and led to a rather funny comment from the company's 'mascot' James Workshop (who usually only announces the final order dates for Christmas in each territory) who appeared in the video and mournfully said "I'm only supposed to exist at Christmas." In fact many of the rules updates over the past few years seem to be attempts to lower the win rates of overpowered armies based on results from tournaments held globally. The issue is that chasing the meta and tournament play is not something that the majority of the players engage in, and these sometimes quite rapid rules changes can be confusing for many much more casual players. As a result of this I myself have been daunted by the idea of gaming again, and have not played a game in five editions now.
There have also been many changes with the model line that have not been the most welcome. Besides the price rises, which have always been contentious despite not being much higher than inflation (although Warhammer is far more expensive than most of its competition in the wargaming hobby, both in terms of its rules and models, and the cost of Warhammer+ is far too high for the content available) many people have expressed issues with many of the new model releases, as several kits have been released with admittedly an incredible level of detail, however limited to only a few poses, with less options for wargear. The update to the Ork Boyz kit and the Chaos Cultists were a good example of this, as they are units from horde armies, and so how many collectors may wish to have an army of troops made of the same ten models? In fact the Ork one was even more disappointing, as the unit featured a mixed weapon loadout, something the rules didn't especially favour for the Orks, and only came in ten models despite being able to feature Boyz in squads of up to thirty. Fortunately the old Ork Boyz kit is also still available to allow for some variety, but it is still a disheartening change, and it feels like the older kit will eventually be retired, as many other models have been. Myself as a Space Marine collector I have been hit with seeing several of my army's mainstay units getting retired. Many older characters are no longer available to buy, even if they do still receive rule support, and in many cases these were older, once-metal but now resin models. However several other units were retired, plastic kits for specific niche units such as a siege dreadnought and anti-aircraft tank. Firstborn Marines have also had a long standing bedrock of three units that the army has always been built upon - the Tactical Squad, a flexible unit of battleline soldiers, the Assault Squad, a unit of fast-moving close combat specialists, and the Devastator Squad, a unit of heavy weapons troopers. Even in the lore the Space Marines are organised along the lines of Tactical, Assault and Devastator Squads making up the majority of their forces. However the Assault Squad kit was retired as soon as its closest analogue for the Primaris was released, and is now unavailable new except for on the second-hand market. This was a hugely shocking change for me and many others, and was recently superseded when, in the lead-up to the release of Age of Sigmar's Fourth Edition Games Workshop announced on a now-notorious Community article that they were retiring several models, including a small Orruk faction left over from the Fantasy range, a load of Skaven models that are due to be replaced in the future, the entire Beastmen range (which is being moved to The Old World), and most surprisingly, a large amount of the Stormcast Eternals models, the oldest of which came out with the First Edition of Age of Sigmar, and so are less than a decade old. Considering some armies still have model kits that haven't been replaced in twenty plus years, and the success of Warhammer: The Old World, which focuses almost entirely on returning a large majority of much older kits to active production, retiring a range that is that young seems like a baffling choice, and one that has many fans questioning what it could mean for their armies in the future, especially as units and armies removed from the game no longer get active rules support, being moved to Warhammer Legends and removed from tournament matched play events as well as balance changes.
However there are several things Games Workshop are doing that I do find encouraging. As I said they had a business boom during the Covid lockdowns, as people were at home and the hobby works really well for people needing something to do in that instance. However what this business boom did lead to was a large profit, and while Games Workshop is still susceptible to all of the tendencies I hate about late-stage capitalism, such as raising prices while boasting about record profits, and seeking ever greater growth, they have put their large profits to good use. Firstly they have engaged in a significant profit-share with every member of their staff over the years, from designers to store staff to factory workers. They also returned the money supplied by the British Government for the furlough scheme, not needing it due to their increased profits, and as many companies kept this money when they didn't need it I found this something to be admired. They have also continued to expand their development headquarters in Nottingham, building a third factory and currently planning a fourth, creating hundreds of new jobs.
So as I said, there are good and bad things about the current direction of Warhammer, but overall I am glad I am back engaging with the community and the hobby. Except there is one much more glaring issue that has been growing within the Warhammer fandom for a long time, and one that I can feel as the biggest issue against my current enjoyment of the hobby, and that is the right-wing element of the fandom that have been emboldened by the anonymity of online spaces to spread vile rhetoric antithetical to what I feel this community represents.
Warhammer 40,000 is first and foremost a satire. Now most people think of satire as needing to be funny, as humourous satire is by far the most common. However what Warhammer instead does is exaggeration. By its own description, as shown in the statement beginning every novel and rulebook, "to live in such times is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable". The Imperium of Man, while the central faction and the main "heroic" human faction, is a hyper-fascist autocracy that actively engages in xenophobia and dogmatic state religious fervour to keep the teeming masses of humanity subservient and unquestioning. A person's only value is what they can contribute to the Imperium as a whole, whether they serve in a factory building armaments or creating corpse-starch to feed the populace, whether they spend their time in back-breaking physical labour to meet the Imperial quotas and tithes, or whether they are conscripted into the Imperial Guard and sent across the galaxy to fight and die in barbaric meat grinder warfare that makes all existing human warfare in history look tame by comparison. All that matters is that you live and die in service to the Golden Throne of the God-Emperor. This is the setting that coined the term Grimdark and is designed to be the grimmest and the darkest example of that, a dystopia where every negative trope you can think of is cranked past 11. And yet, like a lot of satire, there are many who idolise this, who see it as a good thing. People whose personal politics and desires see the example of the Imperium of Man not as something to be terrified of, but something to idolise. Part of this may be the way that I believe that Games Workshop has mishandled much of this satire in some ways. The novels and fiction for example overwhelmingly feature an Imperial point of view, especially in anything involving Space Marines, and writing them from a view of them as heroic protagonists undercuts a lot of their horror, such as the fact that they are immortal and indoctrinated child soldiers turned into superhuman killing machines, detached from humanity and idolised as the 'Emperor's Angels of Death' by any ordinary humans they encounter and don't immediately kill, deployed to the very worst combat zones against the fiercest enemies and expected to meet their deaths in glorious battle. Yet when written as protagonists many novels act almost as in-universe propaganda for the Space Marines, attempting to humanise them and avoiding portraying the barbaric ways they wage war in the visceral details that would show that they are not to be idolised. However as all of the lore and fiction of Warhammer is treated like in-universe stories, with very little over the years ever being declared as non-canon or retconned, this type of conflicting and mythologised narrative is not uncommon.
Now people looking to see something positive in the worst aspects of the Imperium is nothing new, and there have always been people painting fascist symbols on their armies, or worse, but I noticed it all picking up a lot of traction while I was still away from the hobby, and even picking up mainstream attention. It started when I became to see art from Trump supporters putting his face on the artwork of the Emperor at the height of the Great Crusade, at one point even making a float of this for a march through a major city. This is artwork of a tyrant treated as an warrior god in golden armour, and people had edited the face of a racist, ableist, misogynistic sex offender over it as he campaigned for the Presidency. This was only the beginning. It soon came out that one of the most well-known Warhammer Youtubers, Arch (formerly ArchWarhammer) had been openly racist and mocking in his private Discord server, and the negative attention this generated even led to Games Workshop sending him a cease and desist letter telling him to stop using the Warhammer name, and saw them issue a statement that led with the phrase "Warhammer is for everyone" and ended with "you will not be missed", a clear statement to the intolerant that they would not be tolerated in the hobby, as exemplified in the Paradox of Intolerance by Karl Popper.
Arch was a notable name however, and had a large following, and he became more openly critical of Games Workshop and Warhammer after this, but not just in the ways that many others were, such as comparing the almost archaic Codex rulebook and regular balance dataslate way GW released their rules to the more direct and immediate app and pdf updates favoured by other often much smaller companies, or comparing the prices of their increasingly monopose model kits to large modular kits produced by their competitors or even the 3D printing STLs or third party sellers that could provide proxy units for pretty much everything they sold at a much more competitive price point. No instead their criticism turned to many of the more regular right-wing dogwhistles, such as commenting on the inclusion of more female models and characters in the ranks of the Imperial Guard and Inquisition, or black and other minority characters on the front covers of Black Library novels. None of this should be new, or surprising, and there are a great many reasons why such advances and changes were being made, most obviously money and appealing to a larger audience, but also to improve the setting and have it more accurately serve as a future version of our own world, as originally intended.
Because the thing is, while what I said above about the value the Imperium (and other races) put on human life is correct, this has not always been well represented in the model lines. In a world where gender and race should not matter, and the lore states that women soldiers are incredibly common, there have always been comparatively low amounts of female miniatures in the games. Part of this is that when Warhammer started back in the 80s there was as plan by the company, as discussed in interviews by Alan Merrett, the former head of Intellectual Property, to release a healthy ratio of female models, however back then they simply did not sell. As a result it was even written into the lore of several factions that they didn't have women in them for various reasons - Orcs/Orks/Orruks were a monogendered fungoid race, Space Marines were defined as all male due to a quirk of the genetic processes used to create them, Bretonnian Knights were all male due to the oaths they swore, as well as the majority of Fantasy models being painted as white men due to their factions being analogous to medieval Europe, but the Sisters of Battle were also introduced, a group of battle armoured warrior nuns for 40K, creating an overwhelming force of majority female army that did become very popular with a group of players, having a very dedicated following for decades. This has begun to change in recent times. When Age of Sigmar was launched the Stormcast Eternals, despite being a very close analogue to Space Marines, incorporated female models almost from the get-go, and many more models started to be painted as non-white races across the Imperial Guard and Sigmar lines. In fact the Cadian squad, shortly before the kit was completely changed as part of a line-wide relaunch, was given an extra sprue of alternate heads, featuring more female and ethnic features, and several of the new Primaris Black Templar Space Marines were painted black. This was done along with a greater focus on including more diverse characters in as many novels as possible, and even creating a series on Warhammer+ focusing on female Stormcast Eternal Naeve Blacktalon and her allies. Obviously all of this positive progression in representing diversity positively rather than through tokenism generated negative attention from the worst parts of the fandom, leading to Games Workshop continuing to clarify their position through more social media and community posts, including further action after a competitor called the Austrian Painter won a tournament after his competitor in the final refused to play him based on his name. A Community update titled "The Imperium is Driven by Hate. Warhammer Is Not" set out plainly that prejudice, hatred and abuse would not be tolerated, and they do not want the money or participation of anyone who feels differently.
Recently however several larger lore changes have occurred that have increased the diversity available, and this has obviously been very divisive. In fact many people have taken it upon themselves to "gatekeep" Warhammer, creating a fandom at war with itself as well as Games Workshop. The first big notable event was the launch of Warhammer: the Old World, which had Bretonnians as one of its launch factions. As I've said for the Old World the majority of the models released are the old Fantasy range, however there are some new models as well, and the Bretonnians gained new Knight models, including women for the first time, and the lore was changed to say that women Knights had always existed but were rare. Now the idea of changes to the lore being addressed as if they were always there is not uncommon. Games Workshop considers itself first and foremost a model company, and so lore is written to include new units such as squads of soldiers, heroic characters, ravening monsters or powerful war machines as though they have always been there. For example the range refresh that the Cadians got as part of the Ninth Edition Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum launch saw the introduction of a new large battletank called the Rogal Dorn, named after a Primarch, which despite never having been seen before was included in the lore as always having been a part of the setting, albeit a rare piece of technology. As I said before this tends to explain a lot of the conflicting nature of the lore as written, as it is all written from an in-universe perspective in order to explain away such discrepancies. Why had the Rogal Dorn never been seen in novels or lore before its launch? Well perhaps the chroniclers who had written those tales had just never seen them, or were unaware of its existence. This could also be why we had never seen female Bretonnian Knights before, despite it being clearly stated now that they had always existed but were rare. However in a similar way to the launch of the Primaris a lore retcon this severe saw many detractors, yet unlike that incident many of the complaints this time were pushed by right-wing grifters who suddenly started to develop Warhammer focused content to rant about Warhammer "going woke", and this was exacerbated with the next big lore change, revealing that members of the Imperium's Custodian Guard, only recently introduced as a tabletop faction, included female members. The Custodes were also genetically engineered superhuman warriors, made by a process more advanced and secretive even than the one used to create Space Marines. They were a comparatively small force, only numbering ten thousand across the entire Imperium, and their Tenth Edition Codex included two named female Custodes in fiction excerpts, with one of them, the Custodian Calladayce Taurovalia Kesh, having her story leaked ahead of release.
To say that the addition of Kesh broke the minds of the right-wing CHUDhammer is a very delicate understatement. I should state first of all that, unlike with Space Marines, it had never been confirmed in previous lore that the Custodes were all male, however all Custodes characters that we had seen in fiction were male. All of the existing Custodes models that we had with bare helmets had male heads. The Custodes did include female units in their army list, in a similar way to the Sisters of Battle having male support units such as Priests and Crusaders. In this case the Custodes had a dedicated support group known as the Sisters of Silence, a special faction of psychically Blank warriors, able to nullify Chaos powers on the battlefield. So upon the reveal of Kesh many argued she could be a Sister of Silence, but she is explicitly referred to as a Custodian, and this did nothing to prevent the rage from many people who, but their own admission, have never played Warhammer, purchased a model or even read a Warhammer novel, leading many like myself to wonder just how genuine their "fan concern" really is. Unfortunately this is becoming far more common in every fandom space as executives begin to realise what creatives and fans have always made clear, which is that not all geeks are straight white men, and that women, queer folks and ethnic minorities all enjoy things like Marvel, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D and yes even Warhammer, and that they always have, and that more importantly they will reward companies that make an effort to include and represent them, despite how much CHUDs like to cite the blatantly incorrect "go woke, go broke" mantra that they cling to. It should also be stated that as yet, despite this change, there is no further representation of female Custodes than there was before. There are no models of explicitly female Custodes, and no characters in any published novels that are female Custodes. The confirmation is exclusively limited to Kesh and her fellow Custodes in the Codex. (EDIT: This has now changed with the latest animation, The Tithes, featuring a female Custodes in its latest episode)
Now a large part of the reason why this is such a particular issue for many among the Warhammer community, is because of a growing discussion in fan spaces for the desire to include Female Space Marines. As I said, currently in the lore there are no female Space Marines, and they cannot exist, but as Alan Merrett said they were always intended. In fact two women in Space Marine power armour were released back during the Rogue Trader days and intended to be the first female marine models. Nowadays many third party sites sell Bitz that can be used to customise Space Marines models in a variety of ways, and female Marines are a commonly found offering. Obviously they can vary in design, from pin-up style models in vaguely Space Marines aesthetics, to large head swaps designed to give women the Marines' exaggerated proportions. I even have some of the latter among my Knights Chromatica, and I am far from the only one. Whole sites and fan made materials are dedicated to the lore and modelling of entire Chapters of Female Marines, sometimes with unique commissioned artwork. Now CHUDhammer is adamant that this change should NEVER be canonised by Games Workshop. That it is an immutable tenet of the lore that the genetic modifications required to make Space Marines from normal humans require the male chromosomes - never mind the poor science used to explain this in the original lore, the origins for this change, or even the biological chromosomal reality of gender diversity and intersex individuals especially in our real world. Now I can understand wanting Female Marines to look a certain way, and as I said I use the exaggerated proportions of certain female marine heads rather than simply performing head swaps with Sisters of Battle for example, as the Sisters are baseline humans without genetic modifications, giving them realistic proportions and attractive features, which to me does not fit the aesthetic of Space Marines. I believe that there is already a perfect way in universe to include this change, by simply saying that Belisarius Cawl had once again improved upon the Emperor's science, just as he did with the Primaris, who have more genetic modifications than Firstborn. In fact Theo's precedent already exists not just with the introduction of the Primaris as a whole, but the transition of several Firstborn characters to the new Primaris scale being explained in lore as something thought impossible, with a high casualty rate, until it was successfully performed by Cawl on wounded Ultramarine Chapter Master Marines Calgar, and is now referred to in universe as Firstborn crossing the 'Rubicom Primaris' to be reborn. A similar lore reason could easy be given to include official Female Marines, and like the Cadian upgrade sprue all that is needed is an alternate bare head or two per box of Space Marines, as most rank and file Marines wear their helmets into battle anyway. I think it's clear that I, like a majority of fans, am perfectly fine with the inclusion of Female Marines, and that it makes perfect sense to .e as an outdated piece of lore that deserves to be retconned, and could easily be explained away in universe as either a new change or an always there but rare and unexplored aspect of the Space Marines, either of which would be fine.
Despite all of this the ever increasing toxicity of aspects of the fandom, as someone who openly struggles with my mental health, is debilitating. I engage with Warhammer because I love it. I enjoy the setting, the models, the lore, the creativity of the community, and so much more besides, yet many of the fan spaces I enjoy are riven by division from the gatekeepers and grifters that have glommed onto the community and are investing it with their own malignant version of Nurgle's Rot. And while I have my own issues with many of Games Workshop's business practices, such as the rules having a barrier to entry due to cost and balance updates, models being retired or limited release, and so on, and while there are many changes I wish they would make to benefit consumers like myself what they do clearly works for them, as shown by their profits, and some steps like their IP restrictions are clearly necessary now they are seeking expansion with entities like Amazon. Yet even with all of that taken into account I still check the Community page daily, looking forward to new releases across all of their settings. I still follow lore changes and discussions. And I still love Warhammer World, their central headquarters in Nottingham that includes a five room exhibition centre, including dramatic battle dioramas that contain tens of thousands of posed and painted miniatures, and is a location I like to visit at least once a year to see the incredible models on display.
In conclusion, while I am unsure where I stand with the community, I know that I am in no great desire to leave this hobby. While I may not be playing Warhammer actively I intend to paint my army, to complete their lore, and take photographs of them, and to continue watching the YouTubers I do, and read more novels set in this universe. I intend to continue collecting and painting Warhammer, finding old Marine models on eBay to build and paint. And most importantly, I intend to continue to share my love and passion for this universe to encourage others to dive into this incredibly fun setting, because I truly do believe that Warhammer, due to its vast and diverse nature, really does offer something for everyone.
Warhammer IS for Everyone.
Until next time. Bye for now.
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